PAM-Wide Roundtable Sue Vazakas Sponsor: INSPEC Sue began with general announcements such as where to find PAM "dance cards" and the room number of the Division suite. She also introduced this year's PAM International Membership Award winner, Sunita Barve. Everyone in the room then stood and introduced himself or herself. Physics Translation Project (Bob Michaelson) Project Euclid (Zsuzsa Koltay, Cornell University) In Memoriam (Brenda Corbin) Announcements Conference Activities - Kris Fowler reminded the group about the Board meeting to be held later in the day. Jane Holmquist announced the availability of a list of PAM conference attendees, and thanked Marcia Spater (Arete Associates) for organizing the Newcomers Luncheon sponsored by Turpion. Cynthia Holt gave a rundown of vendor receptions and PAM events at the conference as well as tips for getting the most out of the receptions. General Discussion Citation Data -- ACM Portal and MathSciNet, to name two, are developing their own citation data and not using those of ISI. Linking -- Fritz Whitcomb had wondered what libraries are doing regarding linking? MathSciNet will support SFX linking by September 2002; SciFinder Scholar is adding linking into the database with data bought from ISI. ADS has recent article citing, and Research Index (formerly SiteSeer) has a free online index. Academic Press/IDEAL and Elsevier -- Joe Kraus asked what other schools are doing about IDEAL now that Elsevier has bought them? Kathleen Robertson responded that one must pay extra to fold Academic titles into ScienceDirect. Sue Vazakas referred to a SPARC newsletter column about pricing by Dana Roth, Kimberly Douglas, and David Goodman. Brenda Corbin announced that there is no physical way to turn on Icarus; she will send out a confirmation e-mail to PAMnet. Greg Youngen brought up the fact that ScienceDirect has a clause that doesn't allow fax and Ariel delivery. Thank you to everyone who participated in the PAM-Wide Roundtable!
svazakas@jhu.edu
Notes: Cynthia Holt
The PAM translations project began with postings to PAMnet asking if anyone knew of English translations of articles by important physicists. Dana Roth and Bob Michaelson noted that some of these questions could be answered by Resources for the History of Physics, edited by Stephen G. Brush (University Press of New England, 1972) now long out of print. It occurred to us that this book might serve as a starting point for a free web guide to translations published in the "open literature" (i.e., in books or in print journals, rather than as technical reports or other gray literature).
When contacted, Professor Brush quickly indicated that he would be happy to cooperate in creating such a resource. Jane Holmquist got the PAM Board to make this an official PAM project, and Kris Fowler, as incoming Chair, enthusiastically joined in. After repeated efforts, Kris finally got a response from the publisher agreeing to the allow us to use the old material. Kris also recruited Tim Cole of the University of Illinois for the critical task of database design and creation.
The web data will be expanded from those in the 1972 book-for example, the site will include full journal titles (and abbreviated titles), ISBN/ISSN where available, and page numbers for translations which appear in books. Tim also indicated that it could include diacritics but with case/accent insensitive collations, allowing browsing and searching without diacritics.
Because of the need for quality control (e.g., the use of name authority control), only a limited number of people will input data, but the production web site will solicit comments and suggestions of other translations to be added. Tim has created a database, which currently has five examples (click the "search" button to see a list of the examples) as a means of testing the issues that might come up in creating a database of this sort.
The database will be searchable by title, surname, source title, and publication year, and there will be an authority file for author. The entries will indicate whether an item is a translation or a translation of a translation. Like the book, the database will include translations into languages other than English, though English will be the principal language. We plan to expand the database to include fields related to physics, such as geophysics, biophysics, mathematics, and chemistry. At this point there is no timeframe for project completion. We welcome comments and suggestions on the project; also, volunteers are needed to help input data. Please send comments and offers of assistance to rmichael@northwestern.edu.
Zsuzsa gave an update about Project Euclid, which makes available low-cost independent and scholarly journals in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. Cornell is main owner and Duke is a subcontractor on the grant. The Project is also a SPARC partner.
The new economic model is still being finalized, but the decision about terms should be made by August 2002. The project will be funded by the Mellon Foundation through 2002, and the cost-recovery phase of the project will begin in January 2003.
The goal is better access to and increased citing of these journals. Project Euclid is asking for the support of the community by talking up the project to mathematicians and editors of journals. The Project would very much like feedback.
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics will not allow institutional access to their journals until 2003. Duke Mathematical Journal is pulling out of the project due to differences in opinion on the governance model for 2003--Duke wants a 50/50 arrangement in governance and decisionmaking between Duke and Cornell, while Cornell wants publishers included in a board which would make the decisions. Duke will wait for a year and then decide what to do.
The web site for the Project is http://projecteuclid.org.
Brenda Corbin delivered the sad news that two long-time PAM members, Joyce Watson and Bruce Pelz, had left us this year.
An obituary for Joyce can be found on the NASA ADS site.
For information on Bruce, see the last item of PAMnet News in this issue.
Mentoring Program - In the absence of the Mentoring Subcommittee Chair, Emily Poworoznek, Michael Fosmire updated the group on the Mentoring Program. The Program was formed three years ago, for those who are new to PAM or new to the profession. The Program was developed from the Professional Development Survey done in 1997 and has been quite a success since its inception. Michael asked for those interested in being mentors to contact him or Emily.
About 20 minutes remained in the session for discussion.
Carol Hutchins cautioned that SFX has a problem with the general periodicals with building in context sensitivity, and Bob Michaelson mentioned that many databases don't use open linking, which is needed by SFX. However, Sue Vazakas mentioned that SFX allows you to list link-out links in order of preference.
Steve Gass announced that his institution is in the midst of trying to bring in SFX and it has great potential for local control, while Pat Sulouff said that they have implemented SFX and are actively linked to three databases. Unfortunately, patrons do not recognize what the SFX button is, and customizing the button is database-dependent; i.e., each database provider decides whether or not they will allow customization of the SFX button.
Elaine Adams said that they have CSA up, but have had some problems in Ovid with metadata. However, Fritz Whitcomb commented that SFX allows for the centralization of URLs for updating, which allows them to create a university-wide electronic journals list.
